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Wednesday, 23 February 2011

Did I hear someone say Fashion Week?

You may have noticed that it is London Fashion Week (unless you live on a mountain with no access to technology, or choose to ignore it in an attempt to be cooler than the cool kids), so I’m seizing the moment to indulge in a little shameless self-promotion.

Through my friend and awesome photographer, Fernando Lessa, I had the wonderful opportunity to work on three shoots with him for London Fashion Week A/W11. The pictures are published in the British Fashion Council's Little Black Book, which is an industry guide to all the shows and not available for purchase (meh!).

When I agreed to this, I was so excited that I didn’t pause to think about the reality of doing three shoots in different locations all in one day. The thought did occur to me in the days preceding the shoot, but it was just one of those not-to-be-missed-you-have-to-make-this-work situations, if you know what I mean.

I was commissioned to create three different looks for the designers, who were Florian Jayet, Carlotta Actis Barone and James Hillman. Florian wanted a deeply dramatic, Audrey Hepburn meets fetish look and James (who designs menswear) required a moody investment banker meets Sweeney Todd look – and I knew I could design and execute both well enough. Carlotta, however, wanted her model to look fashionably frozen! This necessitated (or perhaps gave me an excuse!) to go shopping for glittery, sparkly and white things! I trawled various makeup shops, a few stationery stores and a few bead stores and got my goody-bag together. Then I cornered my friend Kat, who was staying over, and used her face for my various experimentations. Once I was satisfied that I could pull it off on the day, Kat was released with an ample supply of baby-wipes (yes, she is still talking to me).

We started nice and early (grrrr) at the studios, and after initial introductions and discussions I was banished to the makeup room with my model Alice from Cosmic Models. I adorned her with pretty much all the sparkly bits-and-pieces in my goody-bag and she came out looking like THIS:

Suitably frozen methinks!

Once dressed I had to apply more white and icy effect to her arms and décolleté, and after she squeezed her feet into shoes two sizes too small (models DO suffer), the shoot was a go. Fernando and his camera killed it – as always – and the results speak for themselves:

Shoot for Carlotta Actis Barone

Barely on schedule, I started on Peter (also from Cosmic Models) who was modelling for James. This was the banker meets dodgy 19th century barber look, which was lovely and moody and made him look very sultry indeed. Combined with James’s immaculately tailored suit and shirt and the most awesome lopsided top-hat I have ever seen, his character really came to life. They all crammed into the van to go to the equally dodgy location while I was accompanied by Pierre (the hair stylist) to go and meet our final model at Pierre’s salon, Leticia Haute Coiffure.

Photo of dodgy location and team at work!

We were met by a lovely model from Elite Models (I cannot remember her name which is very bad!) who had by far the most immaculate porcelain skin I have ever seen. MUA heaven! Working on her was a breeze and the fetish aspect of the makeup looked amazing with her pristine girl-next-door features. We finished with time to spare, against all my original expectations. We then headed down to the aforementioned dodgy location, right on the banks of the river Thames where the crew had to compete with the incoming tide. By that time James’s shoot was all done and dusted and these are some of the final images (I love the fantastic moody background with Tower Bridge!):

Shoot for James Hillman

With exhaustion setting in, Florian’s shoot got underway. There was much changing of the gag-headdress and gas-mask causing major makeup smudgery and requiring rapid reapplications, so I was kept busy most of the time. Fernando sacrificed his trainers ending up knee high in river water (ugh) to get the best shot. Now THAT is dedication. And he definitely got some great shots:

Shoot for Florian Jayet

So, with our goal achieved and the designers happy, we all hit the pub and got slightly trolleyed!